Thursday, February 3, 2005

Articles I have written

Recently I came to discover that an article I had written on the Diagnostics namespace in .NET, and thought had been published, did not actually make it into print. The article was purchased, however, as I have come to learn they did not have the room in the periodical to include it, so it was pulled. But I got paid, yet my insites were never seen by my peers to improve thier understanding of this often underused, or misused namespace, which was the point of writing it.

As unfortunate as that was, I went looking for the final draft of that article, and was unable to find it. But I did stumble on one that I had started writing and was unable to complete, or as I like to say "I forgot I had written it."

So without further adue -

Thoughts on Programming Today
By Evan Freeman
March 22, 2004

If you were to ask most people in the field of computer programming what it is about their jobs that they like, you would be surprised by the answer. Most would answer “the weekends”. Here we have a common trend in today’s industry. However, this wasn’t always the case. One would have to believe that there was a time when the computer programmer was quite content with his or her job. I myself even remember when I found deep satisfaction in my job, and then there was light. So what has changed, what is the problem? Well they say that money is the root of all evil, and I have to say this is the case with today’s computer industry. As computers have become an avenue for improved capitalism, the business needs of the corporation have stifled the passion of the computer professional. I have to recount the days when I first started in this industry and the motto of my first real computer engineering company “never stop innovating!” This is what it meant to be a programmer. The computer industry at one time gave the true computer enthusiast a creative outlet that has been beaten down by business need over invention. Basically it has come down to someone does something just because it is cool and rather than receiving the praise that the individual would have in the past. They are met with “What is that for, it has no business need don’t do it again!” So the golden age of computer development is over, the mindset that led to all the great innovations in computers has been stifled like many things that have come before by capitalism. This does not mean that there is no innovation in the computer industry; it just means that it is not what it used to be. That being said it isn’t so surprising that many of the true “geeks” have found themselves drawn to open source as a means to express their creativity. I myself am involved in a number of open source initiatives mainly because I need the creative outlet and praise of my peers that I do not receive at work. Where I may see it as being viable, the limited intellect of today’s business professional who understands dollars and not technology would not see the light at the end of the tunnel that a truly creative innovation would have.